The first hurdle for Turner’s multimillion dollar investment was, undeniably, the accidental monopoly Twitch has over esports broadcasting.
Just think of the backlash in the CS: GO community when tournaments have insisted on using alternative platforms to stream their events, such as Azubu, MLG. tv, or-god forbid-DingIT.
If you’re not streaming on Twitch, you might as well not stream at all-or deal with the wrath of your gaming community. Accommodations have been made in the past that illustrate this quite neatly-MLG, despite desperately trying to promote their own streaming platform (MLG. tv), agreed to stream the MLG Columbus Major on Twitch.
Twitch is the “home” of esports, so why bother bringing the games out of their natural-and clearly successful-environment? To try and reach a different demographic? To bring a level of prestige in order to esports by thrusting it into the national limelight via cable television?
Thankfully, Turner gave those who lack a cable subscription or have the misfortune of living in Canada another option: a stripped-down “observer feed” CSGO Ak47 Skins which only showed the in-game action but lacked any studio, crowd, or production footage.
I’ll be honest-I don’t care why Turner are doing what they’re performing.
What I saw upon Friday night was a finely tuned broadcasting machine that managed to do the impossible-cater to be able to CS: GO’s large, rabid, and criticism-ready fanbase while simultaneously ensuring that new viewers were able to follow the action.
That’s no easy feat. In fact , I’d go so far as to say that they’re poised to succeed where the rest of the esports community has failed: they’ve made our world appealing CSGO M4A4 Skins and tangible to the same people who watch reruns of the Big Bang Theory (which was, much to my dismay, the lead-in for ELEAGUE).